


Whatever this is

by equestrianstatue



Series: Combat [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M, Under-Negotiated Emotions, Under-negotiated Everything, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 07:55:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12185994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equestrianstatue/pseuds/equestrianstatue
Summary: It was difficult to shake off the pervasive feeling of being permitted, even required, in the places that he most wished to be; and after knocking on the door of Flint’s cabin, Silver pushed it open without waiting for the call to enter. Flint had his back to him, but his head turned sharply at the sound. He was stood towards the stern of the cabin, by one of the gilted pillars, the hammocks newly-strung for the vanguard swinging gently beside him. “Oh,” he said, with no particular inflection, at the sight of Silver. Then he completed the action that his hands had been midway through: lifting the leather sword-belt from his waist and hanging it in place below a mounted candlestick. “What do you want?”(After Flint talks the crew round to bombarding Vane in his fort, Silver has some questions of his own.)





	Whatever this is

**Author's Note:**

> Episode tag for 2x03, though doesn't necessarily make emotional sense until after 2x05.
> 
> While not non-consensual, much of what happens here is under-negotiated, and does not form part of a particularly healthy or pleasant sexual relationship— in case this is something you would rather avoid.

Silver leant on the rail of the upper deck and watched as Flint spoke his piece to the men. It was very good; more than good, it was masterful. The crew were uneasy, unhappy, frustrated at being denied their time ashore, and Flint did not attempt to convince them that they should not be. He simply took their unharnessed aggravation and redirected it smoothly towards a clear target: Charles Vane. It worked very well. These were Flint’s men, and they thought themselves free, but they were not. They were long-trained in being moved by this rhetoric, by Flint’s particular bloodthirsty oratory; by the cadence of his voice, even, the low rumble rising to crests of fury in which they could all participate.

Silver wondered how many of the men saw all this for the theatre it was. Very few, he suspected. But it was theatre of the truest kind, delivered like an actor, like a senator, from a podium: even as Flint strode bodily among the men in the waist, he was not of them, and this at least the crew did understand. He was not their brother, but their leader, and a leader who had time and again filled their pockets with gold and snatched them from the jaws of death. So his speech reminded them, not in so many words, but by hearkening back to other addresses he had given at times like this, at such moments of pre-victory. By the time he ended, the crew had been plucked from their listless discontent into eager, bloody purpose, and they cheered the prospect of gunning down the fort as wholeheartedly as if the idea had been their own.

The assembly began to disperse, but Silver remained where he was, catching the murmurings drifting past his ear: Vane was a black-hearted dog and always had been; certainly the Captain knew what he was about when it came to a fight; this way they would be guaranteed their time on shore in a couple of days, anyhow. It could not have gone better if they were speaking lines written for them by Flint himself, and indeed they were.

Silver admired the performance, and was impressed by its effects. But his own part in it had not been insignificant. It was he who had prepared the way for this moment of ship-wide accord, who had been the first to address the men, while Flint had still been inland. He had spoken to them not as a leader, not in command or even entreaty, but in brotherhood and openness; he did not speak in Flint’s grand, sweeping arcs, but disguised the shape of his story in plain words, in self-deprecating asides, in a careful balance of humour and earnestness. And to the men, it sounded real. It gave them a foundation of truth for Flint to build his castles upon.

Silver did not deny to himself that he liked doing this. It was a strong, warm feeling, not so much of belonging as of being needed, and needed in a way that he had expressly designed himself to be. He had enjoyed the exercise of working his way inside the mind of the ship, coiling and settling unobtrusively in place. He had known, instinctively, that it would work and that he could do it; in fact, he had been surprised by the length of time it had taken Flint to see it too.

His eye flitted over the shapes of the bodies below him. Flint’s stiff, dark frame was easy to pick out, moving in the direction of his cabin, the men parting to let him pass. Those not on watch were heading toward the forecastle, where there would be further discussion, doubtless with drink and music, encouraged by the promise of action very soon. Silver could go there too, join in, bolster the optimism and sniff out any dissent. But he stayed where he was until the waist was mostly emptied, and then followed instead the path that Flint had taken.

It was difficult to shake off the pervasive feeling of being permitted, even required, in the places that he most wished to be; and after knocking on the door of Flint’s cabin, Silver pushed it open without waiting for the call to enter. Flint had his back to him, but his head turned sharply at the sound. He was stood towards the stern of the cabin, by one of the gilted pillars, the hammocks newly-strung for the vanguard swinging gently beside him. “Oh,” he said, with no particular inflection, at the sight of Silver. Then he completed the action that his hands had been midway through: lifting the leather sword-belt from his waist and hanging it in place below a mounted candlestick. “What do you want?”

“Same as you.” This earned Silver a pause and a briefly raised eyebrow. “My share of the Urca gold. I’ve been very open about that. I still believe it is your priority too, which is why I’m continuing to assist your efforts. But I think we ought to discuss this most recent development.”

“Do you?” said Flint, managing to sound both bored and faintly affronted by the prospect. He moved to the desk, where he shrugged off his coat, hitching it only a little stiffly over his shoulder, and hung it on the back of the captain’s chair. He pulled the dagger from his belt and laid it on the table’s surface. “And what makes you think that?”

Silver found himself rather fascinated by this piece by piece removal of Flint’s most recognisable attire, of the things that made him strong: except, of course, they were not, and their removal in Silver’s presence was a demonstration of the fact. Flint, lest he forget it, had taken this warship barefoot and in his shirtsleeves. When Silver had watched Flint pull off his boots on the beach outside St Augustine, it had been rather like watching him shed everything extraneous, strip himself down to a tough, necessary core. There was something about this that was less like that. He was more a man at the end of a long day, to whom Silver did not register as enough of a threat to prevent him from making himself more comfortable.

Silver came further into the cabin, putting himself in the centre of the space, separated from Flint by his desk. “Every day spent moored here is a day closer to the Spanish fleet returning to that beach. You said so yourself.”

“And, as I also said, if we do not remove Charles Vane from that fort, it will not matter whether or not we get the gold off the beach, because he will take it from us by force the moment we enter this harbour. This is an unfortunate but entirely necessary delay.”

Silver nodded. He said, “Yes. All of that is true. But is it unfortunate, really— or is this very good fortune for you indeed?”

Flint’s eyes were sharp and unforgiving. “What do you mean?”

“You hate Captain Vane. Everyone in Nassau knows it. I’ve been here less than two months and I know it. You’ve wanted to destroy him for years, to put a decisive end to his ability to challenge you. And all of a sudden, the perfect opportunity falls into your lap. You have a reason to do it, and the means, and even the partners to back you up.”

Flint came around from behind the desk. Now standing before it, directly in front of Silver, he leant against its edge and folded his arms. He was as solid and formidable as ever— but the posture was defensive. He said, “Are you suggesting that this is something that I have planned?”

“Could be. Probably not. But it doesn’t matter. You want that gold as much as any of us— more, perhaps— and the men know it. But they haven’t known it for as long as they’ve known you’d move against Vane at any chance you got. And it won’t be long before they’re wondering the same as I am.”

Flint’s voice was dangerously light when he said, “Which is?”

“Once we make this move— once we enter this battle, and your personal rivalry with Captain Vane takes centre stage— who’s to say that it won’t eclipse everything else? You say that this is a delay of a few days, but what if it takes longer— what if it takes weeks? Because you won’t retreat from this, even it it means losing the gold. You won’t be able to stand to.”

Flint stayed very still. His brow was furrowed, not quite in thought, not quite in displeasure, as his eyes remained relentlessly steady on Silver’s face. At last, he said, “You think that I am emotionally compromised where Captain Vane is concerned.”

Silver was not a little surprised by the turn of phrase— by the suggestion that Flint might consider himself an emotional being, let alone allow the idea that others might consider it too. “Yes,” he said, “I do.”

“Then rest assured, Mr Silver, that nothing could be further from the truth. No, I do not personally like Charles Vane; but I do not personally like a good number of people, some of whom, in fact, are members of my crew. But if you think my own personal feelings have affected a single decision I have made as captain of this ship, you are wrong. Charles Vane is our enemy because he stands in our way, and for no other reason. To move against him in this moment is our only option, but believe me, the pressure of time we face in returning to that beach is felt by none so keenly as I. Should the delay prove longer than a few days, I will re-examine our position, and come to a decision that is based above all else on the future of Nassau and this crew’s standing in it.” Flint unfolded his arms and pushed himself upward to his full height. “Does that satisfy you?”

Silver did not answer immediately. He felt that he had inadvertantly tugged on a loose thread, and now that he had felt it give, there was no course for him but to worry at it until it unravelled. He said, “More importantly, does it satisfy you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There’s only one person your argument needs to convince, and it’s not me.” Some sort of exhilaration ran through him at the foolhardiness of such a deliberate provocation, and it fed his words to him. “Will it be enough, do you think? Will it convince you, in the moment, that anything is more important than Charles Vane’s head?”

Flint’s face was stony. He took a step forward from the desk, so that he was close enough to Silver to lay hands on him, should he choose to. Silver did not back away, and watched as an irritated muscle worked in Flint’s jaw. He did not know what would happen next, and he was fascinated by such a situation. His concerns were real, his questions genuine, but he was aware that they were not the primary motivation for whatever it was he was doing here. He could not quite have named that motivation, or at least not described it any better than the impulse to prod a wild animal with a stick.

“I’m going to pretend that you didn’t say any of that,” said Flint. “Perhaps it was a mistake. Perhaps you are not feeling well. But the next time you challenge my authority in this manner will be the last.”

Flint’s face was now very near. His advance on Silver was designed to push him backwards, if not entirely out of the door; to force him to physically give up his ground along with his line of questioning. But this relied on Silver recognising and submitting to the design. If he did not, if simply stayed where he was, then instead Flint had forced them into something very different: an uneasy, tense closeness. It was a space they had inhabited before, and Silver recognised it from other occasions of combat between them. It was a particular charge in the air, a particular heightening of aggression and tightening of the muscles. When Flint had pressed a knife to his throat during the taking of this ship, Silver had been strung too tight with nerves and too intent on staying alive to pick apart the effect of it. But it was not at all unlike this. Then, as now, there had been some apprehension in Flint’s expression, mingled amongst the anger and irritation. Silver had thought then that it was born of the possibility of failure, of Flint's belief that Silver had done something stupid that might end both of their lives. But he was fairly certain in this moment that it was born of something quite different.

To test it, he took a half-step forward. Flint was close enough that there was nowhere, really, for Silver to go; but Flint made the space for him, leaning very slightly backward as Silver leant in, as he would have moved from the path of a sabre, precise and instinctive and immediate. The idea of Flint being in any way intimidated by Silver, by the presence of his body, was— ludicrous. In Flint’s world, on this ship, bodies were weapons and workhorses, and Silver’s body was not a particularly keen example of either. It had not previously occurred to Silver that it could function here as anything else.

Flint’s eyes had widened and then narrowed, his mouth twisting as he read what must have been the dawning satisfaction on Silver’s face. He stayed exactly where he was, a careful inch away, quite perfectly still. And so Silver touched him: he placed one hand flat against his chest, firm and unmistakable, two fingertips just brushing the skin above the open collar of his shirt. Flint’s eyes flashed, and even now he made Silver’s heart jump with instinctive fear— but Silver could feel in the contact between them his own momentary advantage. He could push further, and he did, literally, applying enough pressure that Flint yielded and stepped backwards until his legs hit the desk. They were open enough for Silver to move into the gap, his hand heavy on Flint’s chest; to push his thigh against him and feel that he was becoming hard.

This was, first and foremost, a piece of information that could be used for further leverage. Not so much that Flint had any interest in fucking men, or even, apparently, in fucking Silver— although both of these came as a fairly significant surprise— but that such an interest might do anything to weaken Flint’s defenses. Silver supposed that, rather naively, he had imagined Flint immune to something so human, so commonplace. He had believed in Flint’s unshakeable air of control, accepted it as some intrinsic and bone-deep part of him. In his rages, in his black moods— even soaked in his own blood, half-drowned and crewless— Flint had not yet lost the remarkable ability to seamlessly arrange himself and his plans to fit the circumstances around him. Or, perhaps more accurately, to rearrange the circumstances to fit himself.

Flint was fighting for control now, and very quickly he regained it: he remained where Silver had put him for only a moment before he came entirely upright, and in so doing shoved Silver not very gently backwards. His hands were rough and tight on Silver’s shoulders where he wrenched their bodies apart, and he held him in place for a heartbeat or two before letting go.

“Do that again,” Flint said, “and I’ll slit your throat.”

But it didn’t land: the threat lost both its customary offhandedness and its real violence by coming from such an obvious place of agitation. Nonetheless, Flint was never not dangerous; he was simply not as dangerous in this moment as he might have been, and the agitation could very easily prove a launch for something far more hazardous. Silver could call Flint’s bluff and touch him again, or he could acquiesce, submit to Flint’s mastery of the situation, and back away. Or he could do neither.

“Interesting,” he said, a little breathless; he tried to even out his voice, put it somewhere on the right side of brazen. “A notch down from that, and I’d have believed you. ‘Do that again and I’ll break your nose,’— yes, certainly. Cut off my balls, even. But slit my throat?” He paused, letting it settle in advance of driving it home. “We’re a long way past killing one another, don’t you think?”

Flint snorted in something that could, in another conversation, have been amusement. “At what point do you think you might have approached the possibility of killing _me_?”

Silver shrugged. “Leaving you to drown off the side of the Walrus. Letting you get yourself hanged by the crew. Walking away as that Spaniard shot you in the head.” His heart was pounding, but the words came easily, spilled from him neatly-formed, even with Flint so close, teeth bared. Perhaps especially because of it. “You’re the last person who needs to be told this, but you don’t have to pull the trigger yourself, you know.”

Flint’s lip curled, but he didn’t reply. In not having pushed Silver further away, in allowing him to retain this proximity, he rather showed his hand. It was still an intimidation tactic, to keep Silver pinned here under the weight of his gaze, but it was no longer possible for it only to be that.

Swallowing, Silver raised his hand once again. Flint’s eyes went to it immediately. He watched as Silver placed it against the swell of the muscle in Flint’s upper arm, stretched his fingers there, curled them; not into a grip, but an approximation of a caress, deliberate and almost mocking. Flint’s eyes darted back to his face, and Silver thought for a moment that this time he had severely miscalculated: could well believe, in the turbulence of Flint’s expression, that the violence that rested just under the surface of his skin was about to erupt. But Flint did nothing— for long enough that it it became clear that doing nothing was the move he had chosen to make.

Silver said, “See?” It came out quiet, strangely intimate, not quite as cocky as he had aimed for. The hard line of Flint’s mouth twitched; and when still he did not move, Silver let go of his arm and went to his knees.

Flint’s grunt of surprise was gratifying. Silver reached up to Flint’s belt, but scrabbled at it, unable to entirely suppress the shivering terror and exhilaration of actually attempting to remove it, of taking such a liberty. Flint knocked his hands away— but it was only, after a moment, to unbuckle it himself, and lift it onto the desk behind him. The waistband and the fastenings of his trousers came open next, and then Flint had his cock out, heavy and filling in his hand. Silver looked away from it, up to Flint’s face: his clenched jaw, his flared nostrils, the whole of his body pulled taut as a cable. He stayed that way when Silver put a hand against his thigh and slid it up towards his hip— not moving, just breathing and watching.

When it became clear that Flint was not going to push his cock into Silver’s mouth, Silver did it for him. He leant in to it, slowly and deliberately, putting his lips on the head and pushing forwards, until they touched Flint’s fingers where he held himself. At this, Flint choked out a low noise, quickly stifled, but not quickly enough. When Silver slid his mouth off him, and then straight back on again, Flint took his hand away and let Silver replace it with his own.

This was not something Silver had imagined doing for Flint, and he would have struggled to imagine it even a matter of weeks ago, though both as an act and as a deliberate manoeuvre it was not unknown to him. His attraction to Flint was an attraction in a most basic sense, an almost physical pull towards an object so obviously powerful— both a conscious and unconscious understanding that by being in its sphere he stood the greatest chance of survival. But that attraction had lately become something deeper, messier, more insidious, and he had noted it happening. The desire was no longer only to borrow a little of Flint’s power, but to crawl inside it, crack open its ribs, become wrapped around its heart. To constrict it like a snake before swallowing it down. And if this was a way in, a way to access a part of Flint that he would not otherwise dream of sharing— well. There was no reason for Silver to pretend that it didn’t make him hard: both Flint’s subjugation to the intrusion, and the physical reality of him, hot and tense and close.

Silver worked thoroughly and without much flair, settling into a quick, wet rhythm, and Flint began to fray at the edges much more rapidly than he had expected. He sagged backward against the desk, his hands by his sides, gripping hard at the wooden edge of it. He lost the hard jut of his chin, his head dropping forward. He gave no orders and set no parameters, but let Silver work at the pace of his choosing, let him alone with this shocking, unguarded thing. Indeed, he was entirely quiet, but the effort of remaining so was visible.

Even through the heated jumble of his satisfaction, Silver struggled to believe that Flint could be reduced to this merely by physical stimulation. But the idea that it was anything else— that sex could hold any meaning for Flint capable of such power over him— he could believe even less. He had assumed that Flint didn’t fuck regularly, and was all the more convinced of it now, but this was something more than an oasis in a desert. It was a submission to something that Flint could not rule, an admission of something he could not name, and it was unquestionably the most vulnerable position Silver had ever known him to be in. That he would be in it in view of Silver, because of Silver, _for_ Silver— such a thought was too much, too good to bear. And it was far too simple besides. Flint’s eyes were closed so tightly that they might have been screwed up in pain, and his whole upper body was twisted away to one side. His hands at the desk had not moved an inch, had not once touched Silver since he had knelt. Flint was in every sense as far away from someone as it was possible to be while also having his cock in their mouth. It was not for Silver that Flint was fracturing: Silver just happened to be there while it was taking place.

This realisation was as unwelcome as it was unsurprising. It ought to have been enough to discover that Flint had such a weakness, and to discover that it was one Silver could exploit so directly ought to have been doubly so. But it was not enough. Silver had fought, in some sense, for every possession he owned, for every opportunity, for every shred of dignity, and he would fight for this. Flint was breaking and Silver was the one breaking him— and he would not allow it to go unrecognised. He would not allow Flint his sanctuary, whatever it might be, and not much of a sanctuary it looked anyhow. Flint must be made to see him, to acknowledge him, to accept that they were now intertwined in every way that two people could be.

He pulled his mouth off Flint, and raised his head to look at his face. After a moment, Flint opened his eyes, but he didn’t look at Silver: he focused instead on some point between the boards of the cabin floor, rolling gently beneath them both. It was not enough.

“Captain,” said Silver, and he tightened his hand a little too hard at the base of Flint’s prick: forced him to notice it, forced him to engage. Flint shifted his posture, his body turning, so that he looked down on Silver from where he stood. His mouth was slightly open, his breathing shallow, his expression slack. Silver found this vision of Flint to be enthralling. It made him feel something far more complicated than lust, although it certainly went to his cock: something that enveloped a fierce triumph at what he had uncovered, and a hunger to go on and uncover more.

Silver had meant to ask Flint a question, to make him speak in this moment, to hear whether his voice would betray any further fragility. But in the time it took to even consider what the question might be, Flint’s expression cleared. It lost its distance and its softness, and it transformed with alarming speed into something much more familiar. His eyes turned flat and cold, and his mouth closed into a sneer. He recognised Silver, all right, and he held him utterly in contempt.

After a moment, Flint reached out with one hand to the back of Silver’s head, and took hold of a rough handful of his hair. Then for the first time he pushed his hips forward, his eyes fixed on Silver. The uncovered head of his prick bumped into the hollow of Silver’s mouth, and out again, Silver’s hand still curled loosely around it.

“Let go,” Flint said, like he might have given any order to any man.

Silver did let go. Appallingly, the resurgence of Flint as he knew him had set an uncomfortable, persistent sort of heat curling low in his belly. He found he had no appetite to protest when Flint wrapped his own hand around his prick, held Silver’s head in place, and pressed his hips towards him again so that Silver took him back fully into his mouth.

Flint rocked further forward, then back, deliberately, almost lazily, although his chest rose and fell with deep, heavy breaths. This he continued for a short while, watching Silver beneath him, before pulling all the way out. Silver closed his eyes briefly, swallowed, and opened his mouth again for a repeat of the motion. But it didn’t come. Instead, Flint tightened his hand in Silver’s hair, keeping him still, and began to stroke himself in short, sharp tugs.

Silver felt a great rush of a heady, desperate feeling that another man might have termed shame: but it was all at once mortification, capitulation, outrage, arousal, and more besides. He was furiously, achingly hard, more so than he had been at any point since they had begun. He had buried himself deep enough in Flint that his scorn was in itself something he fought for: Flint might be disgusted by anyone, but by God, Silver would disgust him the most.

He closed his eyes against the weight of it all, but Flint would not allow that. In quick succession, Flint twisted his hand painfully in Silver’s hair; Silver cried out in surprise, and opened his eyes; and Flint came with a very quiet, shuddering groan, mostly across Silver’s cheek.

Flint let go of him immediately afterwards. Silver’s skin was hot with blood, his heart racing, and he dropped his hands to his knees as Flint hitched his trousers into place and moved away. Then he bowed his head, wiped his sleeve across his face, and caught his breath.

That this was meant as a humiliation was clear, and it was: but Silver would have been very surprised if Flint did not recognise that there was more to it than that. Silver might have given Flint something of himself, but Flint, he thought, had given him far more. Besides, now they had reached the depths, touched the sea-floor, and there was no way further down from here. If Silver could rise to his feet in the next moment, and smile, and say, “Well, Captain,”— and he could— then what worse, what greater indignity, could Flint possibly visit upon him? The thought that he might be wrong— that if he pushed his luck, he might find out— was both fleeting and not entirely unwelcome.

Silver’s legs were steady beneath him as he stood. He pushed a hand through his hair and folded his arms, as if all of this had gone to plan— and it had, really, hadn’t it? On the other side of the desk, by the stern window, Flint was stood with his back to him, silhouetted; he had poured himself a drink, and now he downed it. He did not offer one to Silver, or indeed even turn around.

Silver said, “Well, Captain— ”

“Get out,” said Flint, still not facing him: a flat, tired anger.

Silver did not know what he had expected. Perhaps it was an argument. Perhaps it was this. He supposed, regretfully, that he could not possibly have expected to get off too; his arousal was dimming, now that the rush was over, but it was dulling his wits all the same. He shifted on his feet, felt and heard the creak of the boards below him. He coughed. “Don’t you think we should talk about what this— ”

“Get out of here before I wring your fucking neck.”

Words, again, that were far from what Silver believed Flint could or would do to him— but all the same, somewhat to his own surprise, he held his tongue. Flint’s behaviour in having allowed any of this to happen was entirely unprecedented, and so the quality of his mood now was unknown. Silver thought, as he quite often did, about Flint cradling Gates’s body: the absolute shock of the sight of it, how unrecognisable Flint had been in that moment of grief and despair. He did not care to think of it now.

“All right,” he said. “Tomorrow, then.”

Flint did not reply. But they would have to talk tomorrow, because Flint had already put himself in a position which required Silver’s assistance, and which meant he could not be avoided or disposed of for so much as a day. And whatever they might talk about about when they talked tomorrow, even if the words they used did not refer to this— it would now, inescapably, be about this.

Silver turned to leave. At the door, he looked back, but Flint remained a dark shape in the frame of the window, unmoving, a fixed point amidst the roll and pull of the cabin around them. Silver watched him for a moment longer, and then he closed the door behind him, and went to join the men on deck.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, you can also reblog it [on tumblr](https://justlikeeddie.tumblr.com/post/165727203937/whatever-this-is-equestrianstatue-black-sails)!


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